Kim Jong-il: Tears of Joy, or Missile Marketing Ploy?

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Kim Jong-il: Tears of Joy, or Missile Marketing Ploy?

According to the party line, North Korea's experimental communications satellite is now in orbit, beaming patriotic songs back to Earth. But even if amateur satellite trackers don't buy it, North Korea continues to boast of its scientific achievement.

North Korean television broadcast footage (pictured here) of the rocket's liftoff; and Agence France-Presse quotes communist party paper Rodong Sinmun as saying North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il "felt regret for not being able to spend more money on the people's livelihoods and was choked with sobs."

The weeping dictator reportedly said: "Our people will still understand."

This is more than just domestic propaganda, however. The North Korean regime badly wants to export its missile technology, and this weekend's launch could be seen as an advertisement for its ability to develop a long-range missile. At a Pentagon press conference yesterday, Gen. James Cartwright deliberately dissed North Korea's capabilities – and its attractiveness as a supplier:

There's two things that we look at on the North Korean missile. One is their ability to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying a weapon of mass destruction, and the second is their desire to potentially proliferate that and sell it around the world. On the first, the technology they were seeking after the first two failures was the ability to stage; in other words, transition from one stage of boost to the next. They failed. On the idea of proliferation, would you buy from somebody that had failed three times in a row and never been successful?